Blog 9: Language and Society - Jargon

What do these words have in common?
 

Alfalfa	Butcher	Cats	Horse
Bibles	Heralds	Lot	Larry
Jill	Joey	Hey Rube!	Big Bertha
Layout Man	Main Guy	Spec Girl	24-hour-man
Web Girl	Possom Belly	Sky Boards	Jonah’s Luck

 

   jar·gon /järgən/ noun

    Origin

 

Late Middle English (originally in the sense ‘twittering, chattering,’ later ‘gibberish’): from Old French jargoun, of unknown origin. The main modern sense dates from the mid- 17th cent.

 

 

A jargonaut is someone who studies jargon, a term used for “a type of shorthand between members of a particular group of people, often words that are meaningless outside of a certain context” (YourDictionary.com).  There are many types of jargon; business, internet, medical, military, and police to name a few.  Lingo, argot, patter, and vernacular are all synonyms for jargon and some people use the more informal terms of journalese, technobabble, or psychobabble, etc. to refer to the jargon of a specific group. One word that is commonly used to refer to jargon is slang, but there is a distinct difference between the definitions of the two words.  Jargon is refers to technical talk whereas slang refers to informal words. For example what we commonly call a “black eye” would be called a “shiner” in slang and a “bilateral periorbital hematoma” in medical jargon.  Some jargon has escaped the bounds of a particular group and made its way into mainstream vocabulary; think of ‘countdown’ and ‘lift-off’; terms originally used only those employed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) or others in the space industry.

 

 

While researching this topic I found many ‘jargon generator’ websites aimed to assist “in the writing of reports, grant applications, and other documents . . .” as well as several which espouse eliminating jargon including a 2010 TED talk given by Alan Siegel who wants to simplify legal jargon and get rid of the “gobbledygook” and an article by John Preston in the March 26, 2014 edition of the Telegraph, an on-line newspaper in the United Kingdom, which asks, “Speak plainly: are we losing the war against jargon?” For various reasons many people have been trying to eliminate jargon from our language for many years.  From Chaucer who, in the 14^th century, begged the clergy to speak plainly so parishioners could understand what they were saying to Laurence Sterne’s 18^th century parody of the public’s mania for jargon in his book, “Tristam Shandy” to the books of Sir Ernest Gowers’ in the 20^th century.  Sir Gowers said he felt jargon was “impossible to understand . . . [and] it demeaned people by making them feel stupid.”  His books “Plain Words” (1948), "An ABC of Plain Words" (1951), and "The Complete Plain Words" (1954) have consistently sold out and gone through many reprints.  Believing that jargon is steadily taking over the world, Gowers’ great-granddaughter has updated and republished “Plain Words.”  The article also cites a real-world example which I think everyone can relate to; in 2005, after the bombings in London, the local coroner discovered that there had been delays in some of the victims receiving care because people working for different emergency services had been unable to understand the other’s jargon.  Unfortunately, rather than eliminate the unnecessary jargon, the response of the agencies was to create an “Emergency Responder Interoperability Lexicon.”

 

 

What do these words have in common? Answer

Resources

http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-jargon.html

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/

http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/jargon

http://www2.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/allam/1914-/language/jargon.htm

 

 

Blog 8: Language Acquisition

 

“The first language we learn influences our perception of everything we hear later.”

 

Credit: Design by Alex Jeon, National Science Foundation

 

“Language Learning”, an article by Nicole Mahoney found on the National Science Foundation website, states that while there are many unanswered questions about the acquisition of language, one question not open for debate is that “language acquisition is a complex process.”

Most researchers agree that it involves a relationship between biology and environmental factors; the challenge is to figure out they converge to influence language learning.  Noam Chomsky is famous for his ‘theory of universal grammar” which states that all languages have the same basic structural foundation and this is what makes it possible for a child to become fluent in any language during the first few years of life.  However, not all linguistics are proponents of the theory and they “place greater emphasis on the influence of usage and experience when it comes to language acquisition.”

The article ends by stating that more research is needed; we still don’t know why language disorders occur, what happens when a stroke or Alzheimer’s erases a person’s knowledge of language, or how some people learn a second language.

The article itself is quite brief, but the webpage has sidebars with information on research being done on how babies make sense of what they hear and the emergence of Nicaraguan Sign Language (NSL).  Other tabs regarding ‘Language and Linguistics’ include ‘Speech is Physical and Mental’ which discusses the anatomy of language; how sounds begin as breath is expelled from the lungs and the air vibrates the vocal chords on its way to the mouth.  The sound waves enter the listener’s ears and the words are analyzed by the brain.  Research has shown that our experiences with language can also alter the brain and shape how it functions.  This page has links to more information such as ‘The Brain As Controller’, ‘Hearing Mechanisms’, and ‘Speech Production’.  Several pages have options to click on audio; at ‘Paths of Change’ I learned that there was a Great Vowel Shift (GVS) in English during the 15^th century and you can hear the difference in how vowels were pronounced in Middle English, the Mid-Shift, and how they are pronounced today.  The site contains several tabs with articles written by different authors, all are equally fascinating.

Language Learning